Crown PCC-170SW

The Crown PCC-170 is a surface microphone that can be mounted to just about anything. It is a condenser microphone that only cost 300 dollars and it is perfect for tables, podiums, and desktops. It has a max SPL of 120 dB and an output impedance of 150 ohms which is good for a microphone of this size and price. The frequency response is 50 Hz to 20 kHz and the polar pattern is hemispherical.

OVERALL OPINION

I have used this microphone for meetings for several occasions and even had it on a small table top podium. It is pretty small and it is also flat so it does not stick up very far from the surface that it is on or mounted to. The PCC-170 being the size that it is makes it pretty discreet and under the radar. The sound quality is decent. I have heard lot better from other surface microphones but for the price you just will not get much more because when it comes to table top or surface microphones you have to approach them differently than you would any other type of microphone.
The PCC-170 does not pick up a lot of external or surrounding noise that is going on. It is pretty direct when picking up voices so you will need to be within 2 to 3 feet from it for your voice to pick up clean. A good thing about it is that it is very quiet. If you are not speaking into it, it will not make a single sound and it will even sound like no microphone is even on. That was a huge thing for us because we wanted to leave it on and not have to turn it off or unplug it in between speeches. So the fact that it is very quiet has helped us greatly by allowing us to just leave it on even if no one is at the podium to speak.